Golden Rule Jones 
Mayor "/Toledo 



By ERNEST CROSBY 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



Golden Rule Jones 

Mayor of Toledo 



By 



ERNEST CROSBY 



Author of 



GARRISON THE NON-RESISTANT," "PLAIN TALK IN 
PSALM AND PARABLE," 'CAPTAIN JINKS, HERO," 
"SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES," "TOLSTOY 
AND HIS MESSAGE," "TOLSTOY AS 
A SCHOOLMASTER," "BROAD- 
CAST," ETC. 




CHICAGO 
THE PUBLIC PUBLISHING COMPANY 

FIRST NATIONAL BANK BUILDING 



-T7 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 5 '906 

c. Copyright Entry 
OLAS* A Wfc., No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1906, 

by 

The Public Publishing Company 



Publishers' Note 



This sketch of Golden Rule Jones 
appeared originally in The Craftsman of 
Syracuse, New York, and is now reprinted, 
after revision, with the consent of the Editor 
of that magazine. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I In Business 7 

II In Politics - 19 

III On the Bench - - 25 

IV Letters of Love and Labor - 37 
V His Economics - - 43 

VI Poetry - 49 

VII His Death - - 56 



I 

IN BUSINESS 

It was in Chicago in the winter of 1895- 
1896 that I made the acquaintance of Samuel 
Milton Jones. We had both been invited to 
some kind of a conference and were enter- 
tained at one of the "settlements" of the 
city. His fame had not reached me at that 
time, for he had not yet entered politics and 
the reports of his strange doings in the 
field of business had not traveled as far as 
New York, but I was attracted at once by 
the open and childlike way in which he 
expressed his extreme democratic views to 
everyone. There was in the house in which 
we stayed a crippled man of unprepossessing 
appearance who looked after the furnace 
and did other odd jobs in the cellar. He 
was, if I am not mistaken, a reclaimed tramp, 
one of the fruits of the good work of the 
residents. It was not long before Jones 
had discovered him, and they were soon old 
friends. By a certain instinct he carried his 
brotherly feeling where it was most needed 
and where it would be most valued. And 



Golden Rule Jones 

I remarked then, as I often did afterward, 
that Jones, while frequently engrossed in his 
own experiences and in the problems aris- 
ing from them, even to the exclusion of 
external suggestions, was, notwithstanding, 
entirely free from conceit, and acted without 
the slightest reference to appearances or to 
the opinion of the gallery. He followed out 
his own impulses as simply as a child. 

I became naturally curious about this 
interesting man, and I heard some stories 
at this time from his own lips which I have 
never forgotten. But perhaps before I tell 
them it would be best to give a brief out- 
line of his life. He was born on August 3, 
1846, in a laborer's stone cottage in the 
village of Bedd Gelert, North Wales. When 
he was three years old his parents emi- 
grated to America with their family, first 
taking up a collection among their friends to 
raise the necessary" fare. They made the 
voyage in the steerage of a sailing vessel, 
and from New York they went by canal- 
boat up the Hudson and the Erie Canal to 
Utica and thence by wagon into Lewis 
County, New York, where his father found 
familiar work in the stone quarries, and 
still later became a tenant farmer. Sam 
went to the village school, and thirty months' 
attendance there constituted his entire for- 
mal education. He had a great dislike for 

8 



In Business 

farm work, but he was obliged to take part 
in it as a lad. At ten years of age he worked 
for a farmer who routed him out of bed at 
four o'clock in the morning, and his day's 
work did not end till sundown, for all of 
which he received three dollars a month. 
At fourteen he was employed in a sawmill 
and his natural taste for mechanical work 
began to show itself. He had been con- 
sidered lazy on the farm, but he assures us 
that he never had a lazy hair in his head, 
and he makes his own case the text for a 
sermon on the importance of finding con- 
genial work for boys and men. From the 
sawmill he passed on to the post of "wiper 
and greaser" in the engine room of a steam- 
boat on the Black River and learned a good 
deal about the management of engines. An 
engineer advised him to go to the oil regions 
of Pennsylvania, and soon after he arrived 
alone at Titusville, the center of that dis- 
trict, with fifteen cents in his pocket. For 
a short time he knew what it was to search 
for work and not find it, and all the rest of 
his life he felt the deepest sympathy with 
men in that sad condition. He had the greatest 
confidence in himself, however, and, as he 
often pointed out, it was much easier to get 
work then and there than it is now any- 
where. On arriving he had registered in a 
good hotel, trusting to luck to earn money 



Golden Rule Jones 

to pay his bill, and in a short time the bill 
was paid. Meanwhile he wrote a letter 
home to his mother, but did not have a cent 
to buy a stamp with. Seeing a gentleman 
on the way to the postomce, he asked him 
to post his letter, and then pretended to 
examine his pockets for the necessary three 
cents, whereupon the man offered to pay 
for it himself, which was just what young 
Jones had hoped he would do. Afterward Jones 
condemned this deception of his, and cited 
it as proof of the evil effect of conditions 
which deny the right of work to anyone. 
During his weary tramp in quest of a place 
one employer whom he accosted spoke 
kindly to him and encouraged him, giving 
him a letter to a friend of his who had oil 
wells twelve miles away. These kind words 
Jones never forgot, and he always had at 
least a friendly smile for the "man out of 
a job." At last he found work and remu- 
nerative work, too, in managing an engine 
which pumped the oil from a well. He liked 
the work and advanced quickly, till, with 
occasional periods of hard times, and after 
doing all kinds of labor connected with bor- 
ing for oil, he had saved a few hundred dol- 
lars. Then he started digging for himself, 
and became an employer. In 1875 he mar- 
ried and after a very happy married life of 
ten years his wife died, as did also his little 

10 



In Business 

daughter. These blows were almost too 
great for Jones's strength, and he followed 
the advice of his friends and removed with 
his two boys to the oil regions of Ohio, in 
order to divert his mind by change of scene. 
Here he was very successful, as these oil 
fields were just opened and developed very 
rapidly. "I have simply taken advantage," 
he says, "of opportunities offered by an 
unfair social system and gained what the 
world calls success." 

In 1892 Jones married again, and about 
the same time he invented several improve- 
ments in oil well appliances, which he 
offered to the "trust," but they refused 
to touch them. His experience is evidence 
of the fact that our "trust" system does not 
encourage invention, being often satisfied to 
let well enough alone, the managers some- 
times buying up patents for the express pur- 
pose of suppressing them, and of thus sav- 
ing the money already expended in old- 
fashioned plants. Jones was sure that his 
inventions were valuable, and hence he 
founded the "Acme Sucker-Rod Company" 
and began manufacturing at Toledo on his 
own account, and made that city his home. 
He had never lived in a city before, and 
Toledo, with its 150,000 inhabitants, proved 
to be a new world to him. City life was 
very different from the life he had hitherto 

11 



Golden Rule Jones 

known. In the oil fields society was simple 
and there was no great gulf between 
employer and employe, but in town it was 
altogether different. In the factories which 
he visited the men were mere "hands," and 
were not considered as human beings, and 
in each shop there was posted a long list 
of precise rules, invariably ending with the 
warning that immediate discharge would 
follow any infraction of them. This made 
Jones's blood boil and he determined to man- 
age things otherwise in his factory. The 
idea occurred to him to put up the Golden 
Rule instead of a placard of regulations, but 
he fought against it in his mind, knowing 
that it might seem peculiar and that it 
would be misunderstood, but the thought 
took possession of him and finally up it 
went, "Whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them," or, as 
he was wont to translate it in conversation, 
"Do unto others as if you were the others." 
When, on opening his shop, he sat down 
with his foreman to make out the payroll, 
the latter took from his pocket a statement 
of the wages paid by other companies. "Put 
that away," cried Jones. "What has that 
got to do with it? What can we afford to 
pay?" And the result of this novel plan 
was that he always paid the highest wages 
for the shortest hours of any employer in 

12 



In Business 

Toledo. One of those kindly critics who 
invariably find fault with honest efforts to 
do good, blamed him once for paying high 
wages when so many men were out of 
employment. 

"You might employ twice as many if you 
cut down their wages one-half," he said. 

"If there is to be any cutting down," was 
the answer, "it seems to me it ought to 
come out of my share, and not from men 
who are getting much less than I am." 

Once when he was visiting the factory 
of a neighbor the latter said to him: "See 
here, Jones, here is a case that troubles me. 
How would you treat it according to your 
new ideas? I have a man here who has 
spoiled three sets of castings in a week and 
that means a loss of so much. What would 
you do with him?" 

"The first thing I would do," Jones 
replied, "would be to imagine myself in his 
place. How long have you employed him?" 

"Two years, isn't it?" answered the pro- 
prietor, turning to his bookkeeper. 

"Yes, sir, two years and three months." 

"Has he ever spoiled a casting before?" 
asked Jones. 

"No." 

"How much vacation has he had since 
he came?" 

J3 



Golden Rule Jones 

"Look at the books and see," said the 
employer to the clerk. 

"Let me see," answered the latter, taking 
down a blank book and turning over the 
pages, "two, three — just five days in all." 

"Why, I understand it very well," said 
Jones with a smile. "His nerves have got 
out of order with continual wear and tear. 
If I were you I would give him a fort- 
night's vacation!" And in his own shop 
every employe had a week's holiday each 
summer with full pay, an unheard-of luxury 
until he introduced it. 

On one occasion one of Jones's workmen 
got drunk and injured a horse belonging to 
the company by driving it into a telegraph 
pole. The next day the foreman came into 
the office and said, "Of course Brown must 
be discharged to-day." 

"Why?" asked Jones. "He was dead drunk, 
wasn't he, with no more sense than a stick 
or a stone? Now, suppose we could take 
a stick or a stone and make a good citizen 
for the State of Ohio out of it, don't you 
think it would be even better than making 
sucker rods? Send Brown to me when he 
comes in." And when at last Brown came, 
shamefaced and repentant, into the private 
office, Jones said nothing, but took down 
his Testament from the shelf and read the 
story of the woman who was accused before 

14 



In Business . 

Jesus, ending with the words, "Neither do 
I condemn thee; go and sin no more." And 
that was all the reproof the man received. 
He was often blamed for keeping intem- 
perate men in his employ, but his object was 
to reclaim them. "It would be an easy mat- 
ter to 'fire out' every drinking man in the 
shop and fill their places with sober men," 
he says. "That would be easy. Any 'good 
business man' could do that. But to make 
conditions in and about a shop that will 
make life so attractive and beautiful to men 
as to lead them to live beautiful lives for 
their own sake and for the sake of the world 
about them, this is a task calling for quali- 
fications not usually required of the 'suc- 
cessful business manager.' " 

Such were the anecdotes which I heard 
with regard to Jones when I first met him 
at Chicago. And the strange thing was 
that his business methods were completely 
successful. He turned the vacant land next 
to his factory — space which was sorely 
needed for his increasing business — into a 
park and playground and named it Golden 
Rule Park. He established an eight-hour 
day, although none of his competitors fol- 
lowed his example, and yet his business 
and his income grew. "If I don't look out," 
he said to me once, "I'll become a millionaire, 
and what should I do with a million? It's 

15 



Golden Rule Jones 

a curious fact that while I never thought 
of such a thing, this Golden Rule business 
has helped the company. People give me 
four hundred dollars for engines which they 
won't pay over three hundred and fifty dol- 
lars for to other manufacturers. I don't 
understand it at all." I was present once 
at his office in Toledo while he and two of 
his managers were discussing what to do 
with a recalcitrant debtor. They had deliv- 
ered a machine to this man a year before, 
and, although he was amply able to pay, 
he had never sent the money. The two men 
were trying to persuade Jones to bring suit 
against him, but he would not look at the 
case in that light. He did not like the idea 
of going to law, and would only promise 
to think it over. One thing which troubled 
him was the handsome house in which he 
lived, and which he had built or bought 
before his democratic nature had fully 
matured. The "settlement" idea impressed 
him at Chicago. "If I had only known of this 
before," he said, "I would have built my 
house down among the homes of our work- 
men." He felt like an exile in the fashion- 
able quarter of Toledo, and he made it a 
point to take his midday meal with the men 
in "Golden Rule Hall," over the factory, 
where he organized a common dining-room 
for them at cost. 

16 



In Business 

Jones actually loved his fellowmen, not 
in theory only, but by instinct, and it is 
interesting to watch a man who acts upon 
such unusual principles, for you are always 
wondering what he will do next. What 
would a lover of his kind do under such and 
such circumstances? It is as interesting as 
a chess problem, "white to play and check 
in three moves." He dropped in upon a 
co-operative restaurant once in New York 
and found the young men and women 
employed there with two or three hours of 
leisure on their hands. He solved the prob- 
lem on the spot by taking all hands off to 
a baseball match, and a merry and uncon- 
ventional party they must have been. 

In his "Autobiography," which forms an 
introduction to his book, "The New Right," 
published in 1899, Jones gives us his first 
impressions of business life in Toledo. "I 
think," he says, "the first real shock to 
my social consciousness came when the 
swarms of men swooped down upon us 
begging for work, soon after signs of life 
began to manifest themselves around the 
abandoned factory which we rented for our 
new enterprise. I never had seen anything 
like it; their piteous appeals and the very 
pathos of the looks of many of them stirred 
the deepest sentiments of compassion within 
me. I felt keenly the degradation and 

17 



Golden Rule Jones 

shame of the situation; without knowing 
why or how, I began to ask myself why I 
had a right to be comfortable and happy in 
a world in which other men, by nature 
quite as good as I, and willing to work, will- 
ing to give their service to society, were 
denied the right even to the meanest kind 
of existence. ... I soon discovered that I 
was making the acquaintance of a new kind 
of man. Always a believer in the equality 
of the Declaration of Independence, I now 
for the first time came into contact with 
workingmen who seemed to have a sense 
of social inferiority, wholly incapable of any 
conception of equality, and this feeling I 
believed it was my duty to destroy. With- 
out any organized plan, and hardly know- 
ing what I was doing, I determined that 
this groveling conception must be over- 
come; so we began to take steps to 
break down this feeling of class distinction 
and social inequality." He arranged for an 
occasional picnic or excursion, to which the 
men came with their families, and he invited 
them to his fine house at receptions to which 
his wealthier friends were also bidden. 



18 



II 

IN POLITICS 

It was these experiments of Jones which 
attracted public attention in Toledo to him. 
In the spring of 1897 a convention of the 
Republican party in that city was held to 
select a candidate for mayor, and it so hap- 
pened that there was a deadlock between 
the supporters of three contending candi- 
dates, no one of whom could secure a major- 
ity. It was necessary to compromise upon 
a new man, and the belief that the name 
of Jones would appeal to the labor vote 
caused the selection to fall upon him. He 
had always been a Republican and a church 
member and was supposed to be entirely 
conservative and respectable — a little eccen- 
tric perhaps, but with eccentricities which 
might prove good vote getters. Toledo was 
a Republican town and Jones was elected 
by a majority of over five hundred. If 
his nomination was a surprise to the 
party managers, his course in office was still 
more so, for he refused absolutely to listen 
to partisan advice of any kind, and devoted 

19 



Golden Rule Jones 

himself to the task of applying the Golden 
Rule to the administration of the city gov- 
ernment. He tells us that he thought that 
the great need of municipalities was the 
formation of ideals. Looking upon us as 
"a nation of Mammon worshipers, with 
gold as our god," he endeavored to "lift 
the public mind in some measure into the 
domain of art and idealism." "I believe," he 
adds, "that it is the artistic idea of life that 
helps us to see the possibility of a social order 
in which all life, e<very life, may be made 
beautiful." In this way he took up the ideal 
of social justice, and advocated an eight- 
hour workday for municipal employes, and 
succeeded in establishing it in the police 
department and the waterworks. He induced 
the police commissioners to adopt the merit 
system of appointment to the force. In his 
second annual message to the common coun- 
cil he made many recommendations, includ- 
ing the ownership by the city of its own 
gas and electric light plants, a larger share 
of home rule to be obtained from the Leg- 
islature, the referendum upon all extensions 
of public franchises, the abandonment of 
the contract system of public work, the addi- 
tion of kindergartens to the school system, 
larger appropriations for public parks and 
for music in the parks and for playgrounds 
and baths. But it was not so much the 

20 



In Politics 

specific measures advocated in it as the 
spirit of brotherhood breathing through 
the whole message, which drew wide 
attention to this unusual document, and 
brought letters of approval from Count 
Tolstoy and W. D. Howells. When the 
Mayor's two years' term of office drew near 
its end, the Republican convention met again 
to name his successor. The supporters of 
Mayor Jones were almost numerous enough 
to nominate him, but by underhand means 
they were prevented from securing the nec- 
essary votes and the choice fell upon 
another. Jones at once announced himself 
as an independent candidate, believing that 
the people approved of his administration, 
and the liveliest campaign ensued that 
Toledo had ever seen. The Democrats 
nominated a third candidate also, and all 
the power of both "machines" was exerted 
to put down this political upstart. He was 
actively opposed by all the newspapers of 
the city. The clergy turned against him 
because he was considered too friendly to 
the saloonkeepers, the fact being that he 
could not help being friendly to everybody, 
while he believed that the Sunday laws 
should be enforced "according to the stand- 
ard of existing public sentiment." One of 
the reforms which he had instituted was 
the substitution of light canes for clubs in 

21 



Golden Rule Jones 

the hands of the police. "I have sought to 
itnpress upon the patrolmen that they are 
the public servants and not the public 
bosses," he says in a letter of defense of 
his mayoralty during this campaign; "I have 
told them individually and collectively, and 
especially impressed upon the new men, 
that the duty of a patrolman is to do all in 
his power to make it easy for the people to 
do right and hard for them to do wrong, 
and I have added, 'An officer can often ren- 
der better service by saving the city the ne- 
cessity of arresting one of her citizens, by 
helping a prospective offender to do right in- 
stead of waiting for him to be caught in a 
fault in order that he may be dragged a cul- 
prit to prison.'" And he pointed with pleasure 
to the fact that the number of arrests had 
fallen off about twenty-five per cent., or a 
thousand cases in a year, and that the city 
was more orderly than ever notwithstand- 
ing. The real issue of the local campaign 
was, however, the grant of a franchise 
for practically no consideration to an elec- 
tric light and street railway company, and 
the false issues of the saloons and the police 
were brought in to becloud the mind of the 
public. The labor unions promptly rallied 
to the support of Mayor Jones, and his own 
employes organized a band and glee club, 
which accompanied him wherever he 

22 



In Politics 

addressed the people, singing labor songs 
written by himself. The enthusiasm cf his 
meetings was unlimited, and a blinding 
snowstorm was not sufficient to prevent 
a grand procession of his supporters, their 
energy being only stimulated by "two or 
three inches of snow" on their umbrellas. 
The newspapers on the eve of election pre- 
dicted the overwhelming success of their 
candidates, but when the votes were counted 
Jones had received 16,773,0^ of a total of 
24,187, while his opponents divided the 
remaining votes pretty evenly between them. 
He had received sixty per cent, of the vote, 
against the united and determined opposi- 
tion of all the parties and the entire press. It 
was a personal triumph such as is rarely 
experienced in popular elections, and not 
only a personal triumph but a demonstration 
of the power of the spirit of the Golden Rule 
over the multitude when it is frankly expressed 
in the life of a man. Mayor Jones was re- 
elected in the "spring of 1901, and again in 
1903, and held the office at the time of his 
death. His knowledge of political parties 
gained in office led him to doubt the value 
of these institutions, and soon after his sec- 
ond election he announced his conviction 
that parties were evils, and occasionally he 
signed his name as "a man without a party." 
In the autumn of 1899 he was a candidate 

23 



Golden Rule Jones 

for governor of Ohio upon a no-party plat- 
form, and received 125,000 votes, the cam- 
paign giving him an excellent opportunity 
to preach his views in all parts of the State. 
He might have gone to Congress the follow- 
ing year, but he declined the nomination. 
The last time he was a candidate for mayor, 
in 1903, the animosity of the press was so 
great against him that the editors of Toledo 
agreed not to mention his name, referring 
to him, when it was unavoidable, as "the 
present incumbent of the mayor's office," 
but still he was elected by a plurality of 
3,000 votes. 



24 



Ill 

ON THE BENCH 

The most picturesque portion of the offi- 
cial life of Mayor Jones was that which he 
passed as a police magistrate. If it is hard 
for an employer to express love for a neighbor 
in his life, how much more so is it for a 
magistrate and chief of police! As mayor, 
he had to fulfil the functions of both, and 
the result was sometimes amusing and in- 
structive. The charter of Toledo provided 
that in the absence of the police justice the 
mayor could occupy his place, and on sev- 
eral occasions he did so. He had formed the 
opinion that our police courts are "largely 
conducted as institutions that take away 
the liberties of the people who are poor," and 
he resolved that they should never be so 
used in his hands. On the first day that he 
sat there was only one prisoner, a beggar 
who pleaded guilty, but besought the Mayor 
to let him leave town. "This man has a 
divine right to beg," said the Mayor. The 
policeman informed him that the prisoner had 
been arrested for drunkenness the preceding 

25 



Golden Rule Jones 

Friday. "Only the poor are arrested for drunk- 
enness," replied Jones. "You would not 
arrest a rich man for drunkenness. You 
would send him home in a hack." The 
beggar asked again to be allowed to leave 
Toledo. "I do not see what good that 
would do," said the Mayor. "You would 
only go somewhere else and would not be 
any better off. We cannot drive a man off 
the earth, and the worst thing that can 
happen to any man is to be out of work. 
Under the circumstances I think we shall 
have to let you go; but you must keep out 
of the way of the officers. You are dis- 
missed." 

On the next court day three men were 
brought before him on charges of burglary 
and petty larceny, and two of them pleaded 
guilty. The newspapers report that the 
Mayor watched the men during their 
arraignment with a "peculiar expression of 
face." Then he began to philosophize: 
"I do not know how it would benefit you," 
he said, "to send you to the workhouse. 
If I thought it would do any good to send 
you to the penitentiary, I would send you 
there for five or ten years, but I never heard 
of any person being benefited by serving 
time in that institution. I would not send 
a son of mine to the penitentiary, although 
it is not a matter of sentiment with me. If 

26 



On the Bench 

I thought it would do him any good, I 
might send him there. . . . Now take the 
case of this young man," and he pointed to 
one of the prisoners, "he is suffering from 
a loathsome disease — crime is a disease, you 
know — and imprisonment would not to my 
mind effect a cure for him. I will continue 
the case for decision." 

On the following morning before going 
to the court room the Mayor went to the 
turnkey's office, and calling the three men 
before him he gave them a good talk. "He 
reminded the Wilsons/' says the newspaper 
reporter, "it was a crime to steal from 
the poor, at least that was the way 
his argument sounded" (but perhaps the 
reporter missed its full effect). "He spoke 
to the men at length, and then, shaking 
hands all round, told them to go home and 
be good citizens." No announcement of 
any decision was made in court, but on the 
docket the Mayor entered the words, "dis- 
missed, sentence reserved," the meaning of 
which is perhaps a little hazy. 

On this day another case came before him 
involving the misdemeanor of using a gam- 
bling device in the form of a "penny-in-the- 
slot" machine. The Mayor was very impa- 
tient of the time consumed by the lawyers, 
and apparently was not much shocked by 
the transgression. "The best way to dispose 

27 



Golden Rule Jones 

of this case in my opinion," he said in con- 
clusion, "is to turn the machine over to 
the owner and let him stand it face to the 
wall. . . . The defendant is dismissed." 

Two months later the Mayor again held 
court in place of the regular magistrate. 
Five men were brought before him on the 
charge of begging. The Mayor addressed 
them paternally. "It was like a parent 
threatening to chastise wayward children, 
but withholding the rod in view of their 
promises to be good," said the Toledo Bee. 
They were discharged. Then came the case 
of a tramp, found drunk with a loaded pistol 
on his person. The Mayor held the pistol 
up so that everyone could see it and declared 
that it was a devilish weapon, intended 
solely to kill human beings. It was worse 
than useless; it was hellish, and worse than 
whiskey a thousand times. The prisoner 
was sentenced to smash the revolver to 
pieces with a sledge hammer, and the court 
adjourned to another room to see the sen- 
tence carried out. As they left the court 
room "the Mayor laid his arm affectionately 
over the shoulder of the prisoner, who 
grasped his hand with a sudden pressure 
that indicated how little he had expected 
the unusual sentence." So runs the news- 
paper report. A policeman put the pistol 
in a vise, the prisoner was given a sledge 

28 



On the Bench 

hammer, and in an instant he had smashed 
the weapon to fragments and was a free 
man again. The last case which came before 
Mayor Jones was that of three young men 
who had indulged in a free fight over a game 
of ball and whose appearance testified to the 
fact. 

"You stand up where I can see you!" 
cried the Mayor. "There you have it with- 
out saying a word — brute force," and after 
a stern lecture he let them go. 

The Legislature of Ohio soon got wind 
of the fact that a man with a heart was 
holding court in Toledo and they promptly 
repealed the law allowing the mayor to 
take the magistrate's place. At his last 
appearance on the bench Jones made a little 
farewell address which explains his course. 
He said: "The Legislature is greater than 
the people and it has seen fit to take the 
power of appointing temporary police judges 
from the hands of the mayor. I have no 
fault to find with the arrangement. I have 
no unkind feeling toward anyone connected 
with this police court, and I have made 
friends down here who will last as long as 
life. It is a comfort to reflect that in all 
my experience as acting police judge I have 
done nothing either as judge or as a mayor 
that I would not do as a man. I have done 
by the unfortunate men and women who have 

29 



Golden Rule Jones 

come before me in this court everything in 
my power to help them to live better lives 
and nothing to hinder them. I have sent no 
one to prison, nor imposed fines upon people 
for their being poor. In short, I have done 
by them just as I would have another judge 
do by my son if he were a drunkard or a 
thief, or by my sister or daughter, if she were 
a prostitute. I am aware of the fact that 
many people believe in the virtue of brute 
force, but I do not. For my part, I would 
be glad to see every revolver and every club 
in the world go over Niagara Falls, or bet- 
ter still, over the brink of hell." In a letter 
to the Toledo press he further explains that 
his actions in court were based upon the 
Golden Rule. "There are two methods," he 
says, "of dealing with people whose liberty 
makes them a menace to society — on the 
one hand, prisons, penalties, punishment, 
hatred and hopeless despair; and on the 
other, asylums, sympathy, love, help and 
hope." 

In case Mayor Jones had been obliged by 
the law to do violence to his own senti- 
ments in sentencing a prisoner, he would 
promptly have refused to apply the law and 
have handed in his resignation. He told me 
this in a letter dated February 26, 1902. "I 
have been somewhat perplexed," he says, 
"to know just what to do if I should meet 

30 



On the Bench 

a 'bad case,' and the prosecutor should 
inform me that the law says so and so, pre- 
scribing something that I did not want to 
do. For that reason I have been somewhat 
shy about going on the bench; but this last 
trip I went four days in succession during 
the absence of the judge, thoroughly pre- 
pared to meet any case. I knew just what 
I would do if the prosecutor should instruct 
me that the law prescribed something that 
I felt would be an insult to my soul — some- 
thing that I could do as a judge, that I 
could not do as a man. I thought it would 
be a splendid occasion for declaring myself 
and saying that I would not do either as 
mayor or judge that which I could not do 
as a man, and therefore the necessity was 
upon me to resign both offices, for I could 
not hold the office of mayor and appoint 
some other man as judge and ask him to do 
that which I myself refused to do; but no 
such opportunity presented itself. There 
was nothing more desperate than a 'com- 
mon thief,' 'drunk,' 'disturbance,' and on one 
occasion a 'common prostitute,' and of course 
I found no difficulty in disposing of these 
cases by the application of the law of love, 
even in the poor way that it could be dis- 
pensed from the police bench." And it was 
Mayor Jones who told me of one manly 
precedent for resigning a public office when 

3i 



Golden Rule Jones 

the occupant is called upon to offend his 
conscience. It was Mr. Darby, warden of 
the Ohio penitentiary, who, during Mayor 
Jones's term of office, resigned his post 
rather than take part in the "electrocution" 
of a convict. "Not for the whole State of 
Ohio," said he, "would I turn on the electric 
current to kill a human being!" That is 
the right kind of talk. Let us never forget 
the individual in the official; and let us pro- 
duce more men who, not for the State of 
Ohio, nor for the whole world, would blow 
up battleships full of their fellows, or run 
bayonets into their eyes or slice their faces 
with sabers. This does not seem to be an 
utterly unattainable degree of gentility as 
I write it down. A friend of mine not long 
ago told me a story which bears upon this 
matter of doing wrong in office. He was 
many years ago the correspondent of a 
New York journal in one of our Indian 
wars. General Crook was engaged in his 
final campaign against Geronimo, the Apache 
chief, I think. One night our troops en- 
camped near a town and my friend entered the 
tent of the General to obtain news. He found 
Crook, a gray "and grizzled veteran, lying 
on his back in the sand with an expression 
of worry upon his face. "Why don't you 
get a place to sleep in town, General?" said 
my friend. "There is no reason why you 

3* 



On the Bench 

should be uncomfortable here." "Oh, no," 
answered General Crook. "I must not fare 
better than my men. And a little roughing- 
it does not trouble me. What troubles 
me is that I have got to wipe out this band 
of Indians and kill and capture them, and 
I know perfectly well that they are en- 
tirely in the right and that we are alto- 
gether in the wrong." It never occurred 
to General Crook that he might have 
avoided the commission of this crime, which 
he so clearly understood, by resigning his 
commission. But Mayor Jones and Warden 
Darby had fortunately made the discovery. 
The last time I saw Golden Rule Jones 
(for by this name he was known), only a 
month or two before his death, he showed 
me a letter from a condemned murderer in 
the Toledo jail, a man who has probably 
since then been executed. It was dated, "Lucas 
County Jail, April 14, 1904," and contained 
the following paragraphs: "During my 
confinement at the Central Station and the 
County Jail, and of all the large number of 
men who have come and gons, I have never 
heard one word of anything except praise 
and admiration for you. And this is not 
caused by a false conception of your the- 
ories — far from it! They all understand 
how thoroughly and unreservedly you con- 
demn crime. But the theories of punish- 

33 



Golden Rule Jones 

ment advanced by you are what call forth 
their admiration. And the majority of these 
men do not fear corporal punishment, for 
they constitute a class who can never 
safely be driven, but they can be easily led, 
providing the leader strikes the proper note." 
That there is truth in what this man says 
is shown by the reduced number of arrests 
in Toledo during Mayor Jones's incumbency, 
and the improved order of the city, while 
the number of drinking places under his 
liberal policy was actually diminished. 

Opinions will doubtless differ as to the 
value of Mayor Jones's contribution to the 
science of penology, but I am sorry for the 
man who does not appreciate his spirit. 
His attitude on the bench and his comments 
are the natural outgrowth of the heart of 
a man who takes his place as judge with 
a deep love of mankind within him. His 
position was necessarily tentative. The prec- 
edents of hatred, fear and retribution are 
piled up in our law libraries, but the prece- 
dents of love and sympathy have yet to be 
established, and Mayor Jones was a pioneer 
in this department. The day may yet come 
when his example on the bench will be 
cited with greater respect than many a 
learned decision which is now regarded as 
impregnable. 

The Legislature not only removed Mayor 

34 



On the Bench 

Jones from the police court, but from time 
to time curtailed his power in various 
ways, taking away the right of appointment 
to office, and building up hostile forces in 
the city government. The common council 
was always opposed to him, and outside of 
the Mayor's office the franchise-grabbers had 
it all their own way. "Still he succeeded in 
accomplishing a few practical things, which 
his friend Brand Whitlock has summarized 
in an article in the ''World's Work." He 
humanized the police, introduced kindergar- 
tens, public playgrounds and free concerts, 
established the eight-hour day for city em- 
ployes and a minimum day's wages of $1.50 
for common labor. He used the carriages of 
the Park Department to give the children 
sleigh rides in winter; devised a system of 
lodging-houses for tramps; laid out public 
golf links in the parks, and organized a 
policemen's band. He gave away all his 
Mayer's salary to the poor, and his office 
looked like a charity bureau, so many were 
the applicants for relief who besieged it. Nor 
did he turn away from anyone. A thorough 



♦Mayor Finch, who succeeded Mayor Jones in office, in his 
first message refers to him as "our late and much beloved Mayor, 
a man who enjoyed the esteem, respect, love and confidence of 
all classes of our citizenship more than any chief executive per- 
haps that Toledo ever had;" and he said that he was "instru- 
mental in bringing about many reforms in the conduct of public 
affairs," and he go<=-s on to enumerate them much as Mr. Whit- 
lock does. Mr. Whitlock was elected Mayor of Toledo in 1905, 
and is carrying out the policy of Mayor Jones with success. 

35 



Golden Rule Jones 

democrat in feeling, he never was conscious 
of any inequality when he met the great and 
rich, or when he dropped in at the jail to 
talk with the prisoners. In an invitation to 
me to come and spend a week at his house 
he enumerates the attractions as follows: "I 
believe that you would thoroughly enjoy it, 
and perhaps it would be a help to come in 
contact with some of my friends of the lower 
classes — the 'bum' element around market 
space" (and he names one or two). "Then 
Blank's saloon is a real curiosity shop. Be- 
sides, the workhouse, prison and the jail are 
fine places." 



36 



IV 
LETTERS OF LOVE AND LABOR 

Mayor Jones was a born orator in the best 
sense of the word, that is, he could think out 
loud before an audience in such a way as to 
reveal to all his love for them and his earnest 
desire to follow the right as he saw it. He 
drew crowds, and those who came from 
curiosity stayed to hear and learn. Mr. 
Whitlock gives an example of the way in 
which he reached the hearts of his hearers. 

"What's the Polish word for liberty?" he 
asks of an audience of Polish workmen. 
They shout a word in reply. "Say it again," 
cries Jones, turning his head to listen. They 
shout it again still louder. He tries to pro- 
nounce it and fails, and they all laugh to- 
gether. "Well, I can't say it," he says, "but 
it sounds good to me," and he proceeds to 
speak at length on freedom. And his frank- 
ness ensured him a good reception from all 
kinds of audiences. "I was at Cornell College 
yesterday," he wrote to me, "and made two 
speeches, spreading as much heresy as I 
could in the short space of time, and it was 
enthusiastically received." 

37 



Golden Rule Jones 

Mayor Jones was an author as well as a 
public speaker. His book, "The New Right" 
(namely, the right to labor), contains his 
autobiography, a work which for strength 
and simplicity of style is worthy of ranking 
with that of Benjamin Franklin. Jones had 
a natural taste for literature and as a youth 
was a leader in literary societies formed 
among his fellow workers, and his style was 
unconsciously modeled by his familiar use 
of the Bible and the English classics. He 
published two other volumes called "Letters 
of Love and Labor," containing letters which 
he wrote from week to week to his own 
employes, and handed to them with their pay 
envelopes. It is safe to say that no such 
communications have ever before been made 
from the hirer to the hired. One letter, for 
instance, is entitled "The Slavery of the 
Wages System." 

"Dear friends," he writes, ". . . it is true 
that the present system of relation among men 
and women whereby some work for or serve 
others for hire is a system of modified slav- 
ery, the degree of slavery varying somewhat 
according to the master or mistress. . . . 
The most conspicuous evil of the present 
system is found in the fact that it gives some 
men arbitrary power over others, and this 
sort of power of one man over his fellow- 
men is in reality tyranny, no matter by what 

38 



Letters of Love and Labor 

other name it may be called ; and because it 
is tyranny, it is damaging alike to the ruler 
and the ruled. . . . Because I believe in 
equality — believe that you spring from the 
same divine source that I do — because of 
that, I believe that the natural impulse for 
you and for all men is to desire to do the 
right thing because it is right. Therefore we 
have been trying to direct the business of 
the Acme Sucker Rod Company from that 
standpoint. ..." 

Another letter is on the subject of "Love 
and Reason or Hate and Force," and was 
called forth by the adoption of strict rules by 
the men to govern their insurance society, in 
fear of each other's dishonesty. "We have 
the authority of the greatest teacher the 
world ever knew," he writes, "for saying that 
the way to overcome evil is with good. The 
gospel of force and hatred as represented by 
laws, policemen's clubs, constables, sheriffs, 
jails, prisons, armies, navies and legalized 
murder in many forms, has had its inning; 
and crime, wretchedness, misery and war 
still curse this beautiful earth. Let us try 
the other plan. Let us try, in a small way, 
to overcome evil with good — that is, to put 
out fire with water rather than with kero- 
sene oil. Let us manifest our faith in God 
by our faith in the God (the good) in our 
fellow-men, by our faith in humanity. Be- 

39 



Golden Rule Jones 

lieve me, dear friends, there is good in every 
soul that breathes. All the rule that you 
really need is just enough to provide for 
Equality, that all shall be served alike, and 
I am sure that by trusting your fellow-men, 
trusting to the rule of love and reason and 
appealing to the manhood and honesty in 
them, you will be far more likely to succeed 
than by imitating lawmakers and rulers in an 
effort to 'force' men to be honest." 

The object of these letters was "to lead to 
a more perfect understanding" between him 
and his employes, and he placed a box in 
the office in which letters of criticism, 
anonymous or signed, could be dropped by 
the men, a privilege which was sometimes 
availed of. These letters of Jones's treat of 
a great variety of topics. In them he advo- 
cates trade-unionism, although he declares 
that he is "far beyond" it. "I want a condi- 
tion where there will be no war nor need of 
war measures." He deprecates the caste- 
feeling which exists among workmen, and 
the contempt which skilled labor exhibits 
toward that which is unskilled. He points 
out what he has been able to accomplish in 
the factory, to wit, a minimum wage of $2 a 
day for every man who had been in the service 
of the company for a year, no child labor, 
men being paid to do "children's work," no 
"piece-work," no work "contracted out," no 

40 



Letters of Love and Labor 

overtime, no timekeeper, each man reporting 
his own time, and a cash dividend of five per 
cent, on the year's wages at Christmas. In 
the oil-fields he was allowing full pay for an 
eight-hour day, while all other employers re- 
quired twelve hours' work. In one letter he 
urges the claims of co-operative insurance 
upon the men. If the men agreed to leave one 
per cent, of their wages on deposit for this pur- 
pose, the company contributed a like amount 
for the same end, to be paid out as insurance 
in case of sickness or injuries. Still later a 
system by which the men could receive stock 
in the company was devised and put in 
operation. But he did not pretend to be 
satisfied with the relations which he had 
established with his men, and he longed ever 
for greater equality and democracy in busi- 
ness. He was only feeling his way. In 1902 
he wrote to me as follows: "I am really 
beginning to see a way out of ownership 
through business. ... I simply want to 
get things fixed so that I don't have to own 
it, and of course I want to do this intelli- 
gently — by that I mean in such a way that it 
will minister most largely to the common 
life." He did not live long enough to ma- 
ture these plans. 

His Christmas letters to the men perhaps 
go the deepest. One of them is on the 
"Christ principle" of love to enemies, doing 

4i 



Golden Rule Jones 

good to those that hate you and overcoming 
evil with good. Another is devoted to "peace 
on earth and good will toward men." "My 
meaning will be made clearer," he says, 
"when I say that I am addressing Jones as 
much — perhaps more — than I am addressing 
anybody else. My very intimate acquaint- 
ance with Jones leads me to say that he has 
not yet come into that realization of 'peace 
on earth and good will toward men' that is 
his privilege, and the privilege of all who 
listen to and obey the promptings of the 
voice within. . . . The practical applica- 
tion of it is: You must live the Christ spirit, 
you must refuse to fight, you must refuse to 
kill, you must reject force, you must deny 
that under any condition a big man has a 
right to force a little man or a child, you 
must stand for love as the only arbiter of 
right, and you must stand for it at any cost. 
. . . I am hopeful to the last degree, for I 
can see that just as soon as the people 
awaken to the idea of oneness and unity, of 
brotherhood, the common soldiers will throw 
down their guns, and, refusing to fight, will 
fall into each other's arms and laugh at their 
masters, and thus all war will end just as 
soon as the common workingmen determine 
that they will not kill each other. This is the 
promise that the Christmas bells annually 
renew in our ears — 'Peace on earth, good 
will toward men.' " 

42 



HIS ECONOMICS 

It is easy to collect many passages from 
the writings of Jones to show what his 
economic ideas were. They started out from 
his firm belief in the people. To an oppo- 
nent he writes: "I believe in you though 
you do not believe in me. I believe in all of 
the people and I believe in them all of the 
time — that is, I believe in the good, the God, 
the Divine, the Love principle that is at the 
heart of humanity. My hope for the nation 
and the race is in the patriotism, the love 
of the Whole, that is an outgrowth of this 
divine principle." Again he says, "I believe 
that we are all people — just people — made 
of the same common kind of clay, inspired 
largely by the same hopes, the same long- 
ings, and having a common destiny. . . . 
Holding these beliefs, one can easily see that 
the idea of governing by force another man, 
whom I believe to be my equal in the sight 
of God, is repugnant to me. I do not want 
to do it. I cannot do it. I do not want any- 
one to govern me by any kind of force. I 

43 



Golden Rule Jones 

am a reasoning being, and I only need to be 
shown what is best for me, when I will take 
that course or do that thing simply because 
it is best, and so will you. I do not believe 
that a soul was ever forced toward anything 
except toward ruin." And unlike many re- 
formers he included the rich and powerful in 
his love. He had no patience with class feel- 
ing of any kind. "The poor are not poor 
from choice. They deserve little or no credit 
for their safety from the dangers that prop- 
erty-owning brings. With scarcely an excep- 
tion every one of them would be a million- 
aire if he had a chance. The disease of own- 
ership infects us all." But he pitied from 
the bottom of his heart the idle rich, who 
are "just as pitiable" as the poor man who 
cannot find work. "These rich men's sons 
and daughters have a right to work, to have 
a share in the creative work going on 
around them." But this belief in the heart 
of all the people did not involve a belief in 
the wisdom of majorities. "There is really 
no foundation in fact," he tells his men, "for 
the great confidence that we have in majori- 
ties. . . . Indeed they have been oftener 
wrong in the great events of history than 
they have been right." And he cites the case 
of Jesus, of Luther at Worms, of Servetus, 
and Huss and Latimer and Ridley and Garri- 
son and Lovejoy and John Brown. His 

44 



His Economics 

political and social ideal was a "nation of 
friends," and he saw clearly how monopoly 
stood in the way of its realization. "It is 
simply an inhuman cruelty," he writes, "to 
teach a child how to be useful in the world, 
and then to turn it out to find every door of 
opportunity closed against it." "Could you 
maintain your self-respect while denied the 
right to a place to stand on the earth, as 
thousands of American citizens are to-day?" 
He contends that the right to work is "an 
inherent right, like the right to breathe, like 
the right to be." The problem is how to 
secure for everyone "the right to labor and to 
receive the full, fair value of what we pro- 
duce." "A day's wage will never be fair so 
long as an employer subtracts profit from it." 
And we see in Jones a tendency to regard 
physical labor as more strictly "labor" than 
mental labor. "The people are coming to 
realize," he says, "that the source of their 
wealth is through labor— hard, sweating la- 
bor — and with this realization comes a revela- 
tion of the truth that those who do not labor 
do not produce wealth, all the fine-spun 
theories about brain-work and capital to the 
contrary notwithstanding." His immediate 
plan for improving conditions was to shorten 
the hours of labor and thus give the unem- 
ployed a chance to share in the work. "Di- 
vide the day," was his cry, and he wrote a 

45 



Golden Rule Jones 

song with this refrain. Then he preached the 
doctrine of public ownership, looking forward 
to the day when all industries should be 
owned and managed by the state, and he 
believed that the gathering of industries into 
trusts was a forerunner of the "co-operative 
commonwealth." But Mayor Jones was no 
economist, and in a chapter on the "Trusts" 
he makes no mention of the protective tariff, 
nor does he consider the various monopolies 
upon which they are based. He condemns 
competition root and branch, failing to dis- 
tinguish the difference between competition 
under monopoly — the struggle of fifty men to 
get into a life-boat which will only hold 
thirty — and the natural competition of healthy 
industry under free conditions. In all this 
he followed the "scientific socialists," but they 
would have none of him on account of his 
hatred of classes and parties, and one of the 
leading socialists in Toledo, a doctor of high 
standing, was expelled from the party be- 
cause he accepted an office from the Mayor. 
Although Mayor Jones repudiated all force, 
he still saw in the state "the only instrument 
through which the people may. express their 
love for one another." His ideal was un- 
doubtedly a state free from all imputation of 
force. He was delighted with the sign which 
he saw in the parks of Glasgow, "Citizens, 
protect your property" — "it was in such strik- 

4 5 



His Economics 

ing contrast to the 'boss' idea expressed in 
the order, 'Keep off the Grass.' " He always 
had the family idea of the state and munici- 
pality before his eyes. Each citizen was to 
be "a member of a family which owns 
its own streets, which owns its own 
bridges . . . waterworks . . . electric lighting 
plants . . . telephone and express and mes- 
senger service; a member of a family which 
owns and does everything for the family that 
can by any possibility be better done by 
collective than by private effort." He finds 
this family feeling showing itself imperfectly 
already in asylums, hospitals and various 
similar institutions, and he anticipates a won- 
derful advance of the social conscience in the 
same direction in the near future. It is the 
first ray of the rising sun that he feels in his 
own heart, and it has already arisen. "Elec- 
tricity has always been in the world," he 
says, "but its power was never utilized until 
the last few years." And so brotherhood is 
already here. Let us use it and apply it to 
our institutions. Charity is only a makeshift. 
"I want to knock the props," he writes, "clear 
out from under every person who is harbor- 
ing the delusion that our charity institutions 
are evidences of civilization. They may be 
evidences that we are tending toward civiliza- 
tion; the very need of them is evidence that 
we are not civilized. The way to help the 

47 



Golden Rule Jones 

poor is to abandon a social system that is 
making them poor." He was always appalled 
in New York by the long row of wretched 
men who waited in line every night at twelve 
o'clock for the distribution of bread at a 
bakery opposite the hotel at which he usually 
stopped. Back of all external reforms, how- 
ever, he looked for a reform of the heart. 
"We cannot do better," he said, "until we are 
better." "Love is the only regenerative force. 
To teach love to individuals by personal kind- 
ness and helpfulness, is to do well; and to 
mold love into law and thus uplift and en- 
lighten a whole city, is to do better." It was 
his hope that America would first undertake 
the practical application of his dreams. It 
was to be the "land of comrades," sung by 
Whitman, "the land of large thoughts, large 
hearts, and large conceptions of the value of 
every human soul." "America's task is to 
teach larger views of life and duty. We are 
to interpret that great word, Humanity, to 
the world." But he loved all nations, and his 
journeys in Mexico and Europe— extended as 
far as the oil-fields of Bulgaria — opened his 
heart to the foreigner. 



48 



VI 

POETRY 

It is quite likely that. Mayor Jones's idea of 
America's leadership was learned from Walt 
Whitman, whose works, during the last years 
of his life, had great influence over him. He 
had many favorite authors, and his books are 
full of quotations from the Bible, William 
Morris, Edward Carpenter, Tolstoy, Lamen- 
nais, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Bellamy, Mrs. 
Gilman, Herron, Longfellow, Browning and 
Lowell. But his special fondness was for 
poetry, and of all the poets Whitman was for 
him the chief. A volume of "Leaves of 
Grass" lay beside a Bible on his desk, and 
both books were well worn and penciled. 
On the walls of his office were the portraits 
of most of these authors, but of Whitman 
there were two. I take a little credit to my- 
self for Jones's acquaintance with Whitman, 
although I acted as a mere instrument. In 
the summer of 1897 Mr. B. Fay Mills invited 
a few kindred spirits to a beautiful spot on 
Lake George known as Crosbyside, and 
Mayor Jones was one of the party. Mills told 

49 



Golden Rule Jones 

me that he wished to persuade Jones to like 
Whitman, and we both agreed that the Mayor 
was about as nearly Whitman's ideal com- 
rade-man as could be found, and that it was 
a shame that he was not fond of "Leaves of 
Grass." So Mills contrived a plot according 
to which a dozen of us went up the funicular 
railway to the top of the mountain at the 
south end of the lake, and there in the 
midst of the most beautiful scenery and 
looking out on a glorious view, he made me 
read selections from Whitman for a half-hour, 
ostensibly for the general benefit, but really 
with a solitary eye to Jones. When I finished 
the Mayor remarked dryly that he didn't call 
that poetry, and that the kind of poetry that 
he liked was of the order of the lines: 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen 
And waste its fragrance on the desert air. 

And of such poetry he could recite pages 
from memory. The experiment seemed to be 
a total failure, but you never can tell, and 
soon I was delighted to learn that Mayor 
Jones was quoting Whitman on all occasions, 
and referring to him as the best-beloved of 
his teachers. I understand that Mills had 
followed up the first attack, undaunted by its 
lack of results; but I claim an humble place 
beside him as the introducer of Mayor Jones 
to Walt Whitman. He had a sentiment 

50 



Poetry 

adapted from Whitman stamped on all the 
envelopes which he used in his correspond- 
ence, namely this : "I claim' no privilege for 
myself or for my children that I am not 
doing my utmost to secure for all others on 
equal terms." I find him again quoting Whit- 
man, for example, at the funeral of a tramp 
in February, 1902, in the back room of an 
undertaker's. The man was an old sailor 
who finished his course in the lodging house 
of the Toledo Humane Society. "When 
Mayor Jones arrived," says the Toledo Bee, 
"the dozen comrades, most of them feeble, 
shuffled into the room. It was a peculiar 
assemblage." Mayor Jones made the funeral 
address. He spoke of the recent death of 
his own brother, and said that he regarded 
this man as his brother, too. "I am quite 
sure," said he, "that he did the best he could, 
considering the limitations that surrounded 
him. . . . Death comes daily, hourly, every- 
where. Yet it is nothing to be alarmed at. 
Sixty years is not the limit of life, nor sixty 
millions of years, but it goes on, and on, and 
on, through all the ceaseless ages — our life 

to be a part of all life I want to read 

you a few lines on what a grand old man, 
but lately passed beyond, Walt Whitman, has 
to say on death: 

"Come lovely and soothing death, 
Undulate round the world serenely, 

51 



Golden Rule Jones 

Arriving, arriving, 

In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 

Sooner or later, delicate death! 

"He looks very restful there in his coffin, 
doesn't he? It was Tolstoy who said that 
the dead are always beautiful — that there's 
not an expression of pain or fear upon the 
face, but rather that of astonishment. I can't 
say, I will not say he is dead — he is only 
away. Good-bye, my brother, good-bye." A 
few days later the Mayor was invited by a 
delegation from the Sailors' Union to "do the 
funeral" for another old salt. 

Devoted to poetry, like a true Kelt, Jones 
had something of the bard about him. He 
wrote many songs for his men to sing, and 
there is a simple power in some of his verses 
which gives them value. Here is a stanza 
from one of his songs: 

We speak the word patriotic, 

We sing the song of the free, 
And tell the tale of a new time, 

Of a world that surely will be, 
When men will live comrades and lovers, 

All rancor and hate under ban, 
And the highest and holiest title, 

Will be that you're known as a man. 

Chorus. 

No title is higher than man, 
No title is higher than man, 
And the highest and holiest title 
Will be that you're known as a man. 

52 



Poetry 

Another song is entitled "Freedom Day" : 

Haste, oh, haste, delightful morning 

Of that glorious freedom day, 
When from earth's remotest border 

Tyranny has passed away. 

Refrain. 
Ever growing, 

Swiftly flowing, 

Like a mighty river, 
Sweeping on from shore to shore, 
Love will rule the wide world o'er. 

The prose style of Mayor Jones, however, 
was far superior to his poetry, and he often 
uttered epigrams which summed up his 
thought tersely, vigorously and with humor. 
I cite a few of these aphorisms, collected 
here and there: 

If there were to be improvements in sucker-rods, Why 
may we not reasonably expect that there is room for 
improvement in social relations? 

It would pay us a thousand times better to provide 
work for our own people than to purchase insurrections 
from Spain. 

I was at a workhouse recently, and while there saw 
one-third of the men confined in the prison working at 
the brick-machines for the revolting and blood-curdling 
crime of jumping on freight trains. 

The ideal robber— the lowest bidder. 

Chaiity is twice cursed,— it curses him that gives and 
him that takes. 

It is better to lift your whole city up an inch than to 
pull yourself up to the skies. 

53 



Golden Rule Jones 

After the fight is over we have to settle the difficulty. 
Let us learn to settle it first. 

What heresy can be more fallacious than the prevail- 
ing one that superior ability entitles one to the right to 
live at the expense of his fellows? 

We tie a balloon to one man and a saw-log to another, 
and then declare that they have an equal chance to rise 
in the world. 

If millionaires were three miles high, if they were a 
class of higher beings upon whom we depended for our 
cleverest inventions .... then the tremendous dispar- 
ities in matters of wealth might be overlooked. 

The best way to secure your own rights is to be dili- 
gent in securing the rights of others. 

The rich man has no neighbors— only rivals and para- 
sites. 

It is only a lower-natured man who can be dazzled by 
the bauble, gold. Men who have discovered the true 
wealth of mind and character care little for the wam- 
pum of commerce. 

I was born on foreign soil, but born an American. 
There are a lot of people born on American soil that are 
not yet half-way over from Europe. 

It was a strange destiny which brought 
this man of Keltic, dreamy temperament into 
the business world and made him successful 
there. He was a machinist and an inventor, 
and yet he saw clearly the drawbacks of 
machinery and longed for a world of artistic 
craftsmanship. "Machinery," he says, "has 
added speed and intensity and discomfort to 
production, so that many a factory worker's 
life is almost equivalent to imprisonment at 
hard labor. Consider what a machinist's 

54 



Poetry 

work is like during the hot summer months. 
In spite of the intense heat, the murky, im- 
pure air, the deafening roar of machinery, the 
grime and sweat and dust, when every sec- 
ond seems a minute and every minute seems 
an hour, he is expected, for ten long, weary 
hours every day, to be as accurate as a jew- 
eler and as energetic as a blacksmith. . . . 
A mechanic's work is not physical only. It 
is brain work quite as much as the labor of 
many a professional man. . . . Machinery 
is almost driving some branches of art out of 
existence. It is leading us to lay stress on 
quantity, not quality. No nation could ever 
manufacture so many poor articles in so 
short a time as we can. The combination of 
machinery and long hours has worked 
against all that is artistic and original." 



S* 



VII 

HIS DEATH 

For the last few years of his life Mayor 
Jones was a sufferer from asthma, and he 
had one or two bad attacks of illness which 
were nearly fatal and left him a shadow of 
his former self. In search of health he 
adopted a system of physical culture and 
diet from which he undoubtedly obtained 
benefit. He fondly believed that he had 
cured himself, but no one who knew him 
could share this belief. He also began to 
sleep in the open air, putting a bed upon his 
veranda in Toledo, and there he passed 
every night until a short time before his 
death, when he was obliged to retreat to his 
room and accept the devoted attentions of 
his wife. He died on July 12, 1904. The last 
time that I saw him was on a Sunday in the 
April or May before his death. He had come 
to New York with a delegation of city 
officials to study a municipal question of 
waterworks or something of the kind, and he 
stopped over for half a day at my country 
home to see me. He thought he was in per- 

56 



His Death 

feet health and performed some difficult ath- 
letic feats in the garden (among others that 
of standing comfortably upon his head), for 
he had great muscular strength. But illness 
was written upon his face, and going to his 
room for a half hour's nap, he slept heavily 
for three hours, and I had to rouse him so 
that he could catch his train. Not many 
weeks later came the telegram announcing 
his death. 

His funeral, which I was unable to attend, 
was a wonderful sight. As his friend, Graham 
Taylor, said: "His spirit had been abroad 
before, strangely permeating and uniting his 
fellow-men, but never as upon that day." All 
places of business were closed and the houses 
were generally draped in black. His photo- 
graph, quotations from his speeches and 
songs, were displayed in shop windows. 
Some of the mottoes were taken from the 
Mayor's office, where he had hung his favo- 
rite quotations on the wall, including the 
text, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," 
burnt in wood by his own hand. His body 
lay in state in Memorial Hall, where he had 
often addressed the people. Flowers came 
from all classes of citizens, from all nation- 
alities and trades and associations. It was 
estimated that 55,000 men, women and chil- 
dren filed past the coffin to look on his face 
for the last time. A great procession of 

-57 



Golden Rule Jones 

people followed the body to his home, and 
there 15,000 were gathered in the streets to 
await the funeral ceremony. In the proces- 
sion were the labor unions, the policemen and 
firemen, the postmen, and officials of several 
cities, musical and fraternal and benevolent 
societies, and a great throng of private citi- 
zens of both sexes and all ages, but as Mr. 
Taylor remarks, there was no military com- 
pany or implement of war to mar the scene. 
The newsboys turned out to the number of 
600, and their band played "Nearer, My God, 
to Thee." At the funeral St. Paul's chapter 
on love was read from his own Bible, and 
this was followed by his best-loved passages 
from his copy of "Leaves of Grass." There 
were several addresses, and songs were sung 
by his workmen. In the cemetery thousands 
more were waiting at the grave, and as the 
earth fell upon his coffin a German singing 
society broke out into a farewell hymn. The 
crowd in the streets stood for hours bare- 
headed in the hot sunshine, the tears rolling 
down the faces of many of them. So ended 
the life of Golden Rule Jones, and after tak- 
ing part in the funeral and seeing the won- 
derful outburst of popular sympathy for the 
man who had tried to live as a brother to all 
men, Mr. Whitlock says suggestively: "It 
began to look as if there might be something 
in it after all." 

58 



His Death 

And there was something in it. No one 
who has felt the thrill of brotherhood as 
expressed by such a man can doubt the 
reality of the force, any more than a man 
who has come into contact with a "live" 
wire can have doubts about the power of 
electricity. What are we to think of Mayor 
Jones? He made no claims to consistency. 
He only felt his way and from day to day 
did the best thing that he saw was prac- 
ticable. He admitted that his conduct was 
far from perfect. "Your labor has made 
these things possible," he wrote to his men, 
"and I do not claim that a just distribution 
has been made even yet — indeed, I am sure 
that a just distribution cannot be made un- 
der existing conditions, and the little I am 
doing is simply an earnest of my belief in the 
coming of a better day— a day when democ- 
racy, liberty, equality and brotherhood will 
no longer be a dream, but an actuality." He 
disapproved of the patent laws under which 
he manufactured his machines and appliances, 
and declared that he v/ould abolish these 
rights and all special privileges if he could. 
He had the utmost contempt for mere 
"things," as he called property, and his per- 
sonal tastes were those of an anchorite. 
"With respect to the private property that I 
seem to be under the necessity of 'owning,' I 
have this to say," he writes, "I am doing the 

59 



Golden Rule Jones 

very best that I know to manage it for the 
best interest of all of the people — not the best 
that you know or that any other person may 
know, simply the best that I know;" and 
he , invites suggestions from his political 
opponents. He is said to have left an estate 
of two or three hundred thousand dollars, 
and, although I understand that his schemes 
for betterment are to be carried out in his 
business by his widow and heirs, he would 
have been the first to acknowledge that his 
relations to men and things were not ideal, 
from his own point of view. He was called 
insincere and dishonest and a demagogue 
and a charlatan, as well as a lunatic, an anar- 
chist and a crank. But he was, nevertheless, 
the very soul of sincerity. His political posi- 
tion was equally anomalous. Condemning 
force absolutely, he was still the head of the 
police department and a magistrate. I recall 
advising him to give up an office which 
seemed to conflict with his principles, but 
I am glad now that he did not follow my 
advice. He had to live his own life in his own 
way, and it taught a lesson which could not 
have been taught otherwise. He might have 
kept out of office. He might have turned 
over his shop to the men, who would have 
certainly failed. He might have relinquished 
his monopoly business and washed his hands 
of the dirt of trade. He might have given 

60 



His Death 

away his savings without the consent of his 
family. Perhaps in this way his conscience 
might have been clearer (although I doubt 
it), but he would have ceased to be a unique 
example of the attempt to apply the Golden 
Rule to an established order founded on 
what he called the Rule of Gold. I look upon 
him as a sort of visitor from some other 
planet where brotherhood and harmony have 
been realized in the common life, dropped 
down here in a semi-barbarous world and 
calmly taking his place in the midst of its 
crude and cruel institutions. And he had 
the manners of another planet, too, for of 
all the reformers I have ever seen or heard 
of, he is almost the only one who never 
uttered a harsh word against anyone, and he 
gently expostulated with me for being too 
inconsiderate. "Draw the sting," was his 
counsel to his political speakers. It was a 
quaint and moving spectacle, that of this 
childlike man making his way among men 
of the world and astounding them by his 
disingenuousness. Day by day he pointed 
out the iniquities of our organized social life 
and showed how impossible it was to realize 
our highest ideals and yet leave our social 
and industrial system unchanged. For a 
dozen years he was sowing the seed of a new 
harvest, and we may be sure that it is silently 
ripening in many a heart. His was the ever- 

61 



Golden Rule Jones 

lasting effort to make the outer world fit the 
inner vision — that effort after the impossible 
which is the essence of life itself. "I have 
done nothing as I believe," he said, "other 
than is the common practice of all who try 
to be at peace with themselves." But no 
individual can win that peace in a world full 
of ugliness and injustice; he can only strive 
and suffer and strive again. But while that 
peace may ever remain a vision, it is none 
the less continually reshaping the world more 
and more in its own image. And Mayor 
Jones had laid hold of the creative force 
itself. "Equal and exact justice can only 
come through perfect love," he says at the 
end of a Christmas letter to his men. "This 
is the force that is yet to rule and govern 
the world." And his life was a foretaste of 
the event. 



h^H 



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